Kim Akerman

To Make a Point: Ethnographic Reality and the Ethnographic and Experimental Replication of Australian Macroblades Known as Leilira

Abstract Long macroblades, generally known in Australia as ‘leilira‘ blades and created by direct percussion, were used as knives and spear points in many parts of northern and Central Australia until very recently. By the 1960s, however, it is clear that there were no Indigenous knappers remaining who could produce such blades in a regular and consistent manner. There are very few ethnographic accounts of the manufacture of these blades and those that do exist generally lack technological detail that is useful to those wishing to understand the reduction processes involved in their creation. More recent studies involving Indigenous knappers have provided important insights into many concepts relating to stone as a ‘living entity’, focusing on power, the significance of the blades, access to quarries and other social phenomena rather than successfully demonstrating the technology itself. It is apparent that, dependent on the form of the raw material, a number of different techniques were used to produce these blades. This paper seeks to examine the Australian literature relevant to the production of leilira blades and, drawing on experimental work, to consider the technological factors relevant to the knapping process.

Notes on the Contemporary Knowledge of Traditional Material Culture Among the Iwaidja—Cobourg Peninsula, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory 2005–2006

Abstract Until very recently the investigation of the material culture of Australian Aboriginals was seen as peripheral to other areas of anthropology, particularly those focused on social organisation, religion, economics and the arts. This study presents insights into the nature of the contemporary ‘traditional’ material culture of the Iwaidja people of the Northern Territory of Australia.

Observations on edge-ground stone hatchets with hafting modifications in Western Australia

Abstract In 1972 Charlie Dortch reported the discovery of grooved, ground-edge stone hatchet-heads in an archaeological site at Stonewall Creek in the east Kimberley in Western Australia (WA). This discovery was completely unexpected and considerably extended the known distribution of grooved and/or waisted stone hatchets in Australia. Observations made by the author over the past 40 years show that such axes have an even wider range within WA and are likely to be from an early, but as yet undated, period in Australia’s past. They probably also had a much greater cultural significance than their possible roles in wood-procurement, woodworking or contributing to the food quest would suggest.